Chamber Music violin,
piano
SKU:
PR.144407660
Composed
by Elena Ruehr. Set of
Score and Parts. 40
pages. Duration 12
minutes. Merion Music
#144-40766. Published by
Merion Music
(PR.144407660).
UPC:
680160692835.
Judit
h Tick (biographer of
Ruth Crawford Seeger)
asked me to write a piece
in honor of Adrienne
Fried Block (1921-2009),
who was Amy Beach’s
first great biographer.
Judith pointed me to this
passage from Amy
Beach’s letters:“One
of the sweetest of my
recollections…was when
I was ten… I met Edgar
Rowland Sill, the poet.
When he heard that I was
the lucky possessor of
absolute pitch, he asked
me to go out with him in
the spring mornings, and
steal from the birds!
Professor Sill, whose ear
was true, had been
collecting bird melodies.
I shall always remember
that first spring
morning. The poet and I
sat down behind a stone
wall. It is a sweet
memory of the kindlypoet,
of California, of the
spring flowers, of the
unconscious
birds…”Adrienne and
Amy, the natural world
they lived in, the
professor, the artist,
the historian they
became, the tended garden
of their lives. These are
the ideas I have tried to
explore in this piece.
Some of the musical
material is directly
taken from Amy Beach’s
famous piano piece A
Hermit Thrush at
Morn.